BILL
BILL
Roger Q. Mason
Roger Q. Mason
BILL is a 2-act performance work following Taffeta, a queer creation of color who has recovered from obsession with Abe Lincoln’s queerness because she’s finally cracked the code of digital flirtation and caught a man! This work is a follow-up to my play Lavender Men, which had productions in Los Angeles (Skylight Theatre) and Chicago (About Face Theatre). In BILL, Taffeta is rehearsing for her first in-person meeting with her new love interest Bill, a man whose she’s met on a dating app who presents himself as a young, strapping white log cabin Republican. To titilate his obsession with the Constitution, Taffeta has prepared an evening of Bill of Rights drunk history role play. Here to help her prepare are three idealized queer male muses (think Ru Paul Pit Boys) – named Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness. We, the audience, are positioned as her Kiki Crew, invited, as her phone/gossip buddies, to watch her get ready. Taffeta’s excavation of Constitutional history uncovers truths about how BIPOC and queer folks were excluded from America’s definition of “We, The People”. Then, Bill arrives. He is actually a conservative Black man who catfished her, leading to an intimate debate about POC queer love, white privilege’s grip on people of color, and the actual cost of liberation.
I see a stark tonal contrast between the two acts: Act 1 is carnivalesque, a metatheatrical solo show with background singer/dancers. Each segment of the Bill of Rights should manifest as a different narrative form – slam poetry, cabaret, movement performance, etc. Act 2 is intimate, close, honest, vulnerable – a real coalescence of two marginalized people looking to heal from white supremacist definitions of desire, fulfillment and love. I’m developing this piece with director Sammy Zeisel and our desire is to create a work that’s sharply comedic, devastatingly vulnerable, and unapologetically political. While the piece can be presented in traditional black box venues, there are three dream places I’d like to do it: the Civil War section of Brooklyn’s Greenwood Cemetery; an 1860s warehouse-turned-performance-venue in Red Hook; and the Continental Congress campus in Philadelphia. To that end, our design approach is to create a mobile asset which emphasizes bodies in space as scenography with key design punctuations of sound, lighting and props.
Research for the piece will include partnership with the Philadelphia Historical Society and the National Archives, where I will focus on not only the official history of the Bill of Rights, but also the story of how blacks, working poor whites, indigenous people and immigrants were overlooked in its drafting. PlayPenn and its artistic director Che’Rae Adams have expressed strong interest in development workshop opportunities for the piece as we prepare for full showings. My ultimate goal is to create a performance piece that emboldens audiences to consider the power of self-love, reclamation and sacred rage. BILL is not only a performance—it’s an intervention necessary for us to find our way back (or for the first time) to the promise of our country.
Performing Arts, Theater
2026
About Roger Q. Mason
Santa Monica, CA
Roger Q. Mason (they/them) is an award-winning writer, performer, and thought leader whose work uses history as a lens to challenge systems of exclusion and uplift marginalized voices. Named “one of the most significant playwrights of the decade” by The Brooklyn Rail, Mason creates bold, genre-defying blending the poetic and the political with unapologetic power. Their theatrical work has been seen on Broadway at Circle in the Square (Circle Reading Series) and The 24 Hour Plays; Off- and Off-Off-Broadway at New Group, New York Theatre Workshop, The Flea, Dixon Place, P73, Breaking the Binary, and National Queer Theatre; and at regional and national venues including Philadelphia Theatre Company, Carnegie Hall, Center Theatre Group, McCarter Theatre, Victory Gardens, and Skylight Theatre Company. Roger’s plays are theatrical mythologies for the marginalized, especially those who are Black, Filipinx, TGNC, plus-sized, and previously erased from the classical canon. They walk in the legacy of Suzan-Lori Parks, George C. Wolfe, and Taylor Mac, blending historical excavation with avant-garde theatrical form. Mason holds degrees from Princeton University, Middlebury College, and Northwestern University. They received the Playwrights’ Center McKnight National Playwright Commission, the inaugural Dramatists Guild Foundation Catalyst Grant Award, a Lucille Lortel commission, a Kilroys List nod, and the Chuck Rowland Pioneer Award. Mason is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, and an alum of the Ma-Yi’s Writing Lab, Page 73’s Interstate 73 Writers Group, the Fire This Time Festival, and Primary Stages Writing Cohort. As an educator, Roger has served as a mentor for Lambda Literary, Workshop Theatre, the Marsha P. Johnson Institute’s Starship Fellowship, the New Visions Fellowship and the Shay Foundation Fellowship. They are currently on faculty at CalArts. Instagram: @rogerq.mason
Roger Q. Mason (they/them) is an award-winning writer, performer, and thought leader whose work uses history as a lens to challenge systems of exclusion and uplift marginalized voices. Named “one of the most significant playwrights of the decade” by The Brooklyn Rail, Mason creates bold, genre-defying blending the poetic and the political with unapologetic power. Their theatrical work has been seen on Broadway at Circle in the Square (Circle Reading Series) and The 24 Hour Plays; Off- and Off-Off-Broadway at New Group, New York Theatre Workshop, The Flea, Dixon Place, P73, Breaking the Binary, and National Queer Theatre; and at regional and national venues including Philadelphia Theatre Company, Carnegie Hall, Center Theatre Group, McCarter Theatre, Victory Gardens, and Skylight Theatre Company. Roger’s plays are theatrical mythologies for the marginalized, especially those who are Black, Filipinx, TGNC, plus-sized, and previously erased from the classical canon. They walk in the legacy of Suzan-Lori Parks, George C. Wolfe, and Taylor Mac, blending historical excavation with avant-garde theatrical form. Mason holds degrees from Princeton University, Middlebury College, and Northwestern University. They received the Playwrights’ Center McKnight National Playwright Commission, the inaugural Dramatists Guild Foundation Catalyst Grant Award, a Lucille Lortel commission, a Kilroys List nod, and the Chuck Rowland Pioneer Award. Mason is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, and an alum of the Ma-Yi’s Writing Lab, Page 73’s Interstate 73 Writers Group, the Fire This Time Festival, and Primary Stages Writing Cohort. As an educator, Roger has served as a mentor for Lambda Literary, Workshop Theatre, the Marsha P. Johnson Institute’s Starship Fellowship, the New Visions Fellowship and the Shay Foundation Fellowship. They are currently on faculty at CalArts. Instagram: @rogerq.mason